1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the monitoring, decoding, transmission, filing and retrieval of television word content generally and, more particularly, but not by way of limitation, to a novel method for aggregating into a single, searchable database the closed captioned text from a large number of broadcast sources originating from multiple locations.
2. Background Art
Currently, every week in the United States alone, television stations create more than 12,000 hours of local news programming. Network and cable news organizations broadcast an additional 1,400+ hours. Because every newscast contains references to specific persons, organizations, and events, an entire industry has grown up to monitor newscast content on behalf of news makers. However, no single monitoring company, using traditional methods, is able to monitor all US television newscasts on a timely basis. Too costly is the traditional monitoring approach, which requires workers to videotape and then view and quickly summarize the content of TV newscasts. A need exists for news makers and other interested parties to have near real time access to a database of newscast content that is comprehensive and cost effective.
One approach to automatic television broadcast monitoring is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,296, issued Jan. 2, 1996, to Cragunet al., and titled APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR SELECTIVELY VIEWING VIDEO INFORMATION, which describes a television and editing system that uses closed captioned text to locate items of interest. In the system, a closed captioned decoder extracts a closed captioned digital text stream from a television signal. A viewer specifies one or more keywords to be used as search parameters and a digital processor executing a control program scans the closed captioned digital text stream for words or phrases matching the search parameters. The corresponding video segment of the television broadcast may then be displayed, edited, or saved. In one mode of operation, the television presentation system may be used to scan one or more television channels unattended and save items which may be of interest to the viewer. In another mode of operation, the system may be used to assist editing previously stored video by quickly locating segments of interest. One disadvantage of such a system is that extremely large amounts of memory are required to store the video segments and it would be desirable to simply select, store, and index for later retrieval text content of closed captioned.
Another approach to event processing is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,752,159 issued May 12, 1998, to Faust et al and titled METHOD FOR AUTOMATICALLY COLLECTING AND DELIVERING APPLICATION EVENT DATA IN AN INTERACTIVE NETWORK, which describes a method for the automatic collection and dissemination of multi-dimensionaI data over public networks. Differentiable aspects of the applicant pertain to 1) the specificity of the data content that is monitored and collected and 2) only single dimensional data is processed as opposed to multidimensional data. As such, the cost and complexity of the applicant design is significantly less than the Faust design.
Another approach to closed caption processing is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,809,471 issued Sep. 15,1998 to Brodsky et el and titled RETRIEVAL OF ADDITIONAL INFORMATION NOT FOUND IN INTERACTIVE TV OR TELEPHONY SIGNAL BY APPLICATION USING DYNAMICALLY EXTRACTED VOCABULARY, which describes a method for the automatic decoding and monitoring of closed caption data over television networks. A significant differentiable shortcoming of the subject pertains to 1) that server based features are missing and 2) only single closed captioned data is monitored from a specific geographic site as opposed to broad geographical and dispersed sites. As such, the features and benefits of the applicant design are significantly greater than the Brodsky design.
Accordingly, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide a timely, comprehensive, and cost effective means for the monitoring, decoding, transmission, filing and retrieval of television word content through the client server based processing of closed captioned text. It is a further object of the invention to provide such means that makes such text accessible to end users via the World Wide Web or other communication networks. Other objects of the present invention, as well as particular features, elements, and advantages thereof, will be elucidated in, or be apparent from, the following description and the accompanying drawing figures.
The present invention achieves the above objects, among others, by providing, in a preferred embodiment, a system for the aggregation and selective retrieval of television word content from closed captioned text streams, comprising: tuner means to receive one or more television signals; decoder means operatively connected to said tuner means to decode closed captioned text stream in said one or more television signals and to write said closed captioned text stream to a file according to preprogrammed parameters; and transmission means to manage the multiple requirements of sending and receiving from distributed and dispersed local clients; and filing means to collect, condition, sort, postprocess, index, manage, archive and present text based files; and central server means operatively connected to said decoder means to store said file and make said file available to a user of said system.